Fashion Jelly Belly Jellybeans Sweet Sugar Beans

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Using the most sweeping of musical stereotypes, viagra physician musicians can be divided into two camps. The first group of artists use albums as points on a map documenting their journey through music. Radiohead have never made an album with any distinct reference to the one before it apart from Thom Yorke’s whining baritone. The second group meanwhile pour everything into creating a first album, order then spend the rest of a five album record deal trying to emulate the success of the first (see The Black Keys). The Figurines, more about before their release of When The Deer Wore Blue (WTDWB), fell into the latter category. But thankfully, their latest LP sees the Danish quintet turn their back on the frenetic, three-chord indie pop seen on previous albums Skeleton and Shake A Mountain in favour of something more accomplished and varied.

Taken from a lyric on album track Good Old Friends, WTDWB has been packed with a whole host of different styles – garage psychedelia, pastoral blues, blues rock – almost as an apology for churning out so many songs that sound the same.

But don’t be fooled into thinking they’ve completely gutted what they originally sounded like. Christian Hjelm’s reedy vocals are still very much the focal point of the songs. But instead of compensating for the lack of imagination from lead guitarist Claus Johansen, Hjelm’s yelping is enhanced by more complex, and takes-more-than-one-listen-to-like sounds. Which is no bad thing. The sound is more mature, rounded, and dare I say it, grown up.

OK, these criticisms are aimed squarely at what came before. In isolation, the album has the ability to captivate in places and please in others. The harmony led The Air We Breath and The Shins-esque Hey, Girl are a case in point. Some see the Figurines as a bad attempt at sounding like Built to Spill and Modest Mouse. But WTDWB doesn’t have anywhere near the same sense of self-importance or indulgence. Instead, this album is an honest attempt from a band moving through a period of transition. But without the lofty label of being ‘experimental.’

Jelly Belly Beans have gone global. ‘The Original Gourmet Jelly Bean’ has now branched out into the bathroom and make-up bag. The creators of the most delicious jellybeans EVER have launched a new beauty product range; I’m talking bath soaks, price shower gels, information pills lip-glosses and balms. The balms, in a range of flavours including the incredibly Barbie-pink cotton candy, mirror little pots of glistening jam and smell like colour-crayoned rainbows; what a combination.

The sickening sweet aroma, as you would only expect of Jelly Belly, is enough to transform the most ‘mature’ of the Amelia team, into a 6-year old drowning in sugary goodness. The candy shop style packaging with its signature jellybean print would appeal to any sweet-toothed child, and it seems to even make the older generation go a little gaga. However, after much hasty sniffing and prodding of the gooey products, ranging from cherry flavour to liquorice, we were starting to feel like the greedy kid who’d eaten way too many tutti-frutti jelly belly beans and needed to relieve the stomach of such gluttony. As excited as our eyes were when the new products pawed their way into our grubby hands, (the lip balms were claimed in seconds) a giant tin of very cherry bath soak becomes a little dangerous for one’s nostrils if inhaled irresponsibly. But if you’re a lover of all things sugared, this range will instantly whisk you away from your grotty lime-scale shower straight to the Copacabana.

The little but explosive delights are the perfect potion when in need of a sugar boost in your work fuelled life. But as an experienced jelly belly beauty product abuser, I warn you to use them with caution.

Written by Jojo Ma on Friday February 8th, 2008 6:02 pm

Categories ,Fashion Jelly Belly Jellybeans Sweet Sugar Beans

Amelia’s Magazine | JELLY BELLY – Beauty product range

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